Saturday, August 16, 2008

Regard All Dharmas as Dreams

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What dreams we make for ourselves.

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You would think that we would make better ones. Dreams without endless, senseless striving. Dreams without unease and bitterness. Dreams without dead children, faithless lovers, flesh-eating diseases, floods, famine, and pestilence.

Dreams without those who would harm us.

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Ah, but it is more complex than that.

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Sometimes I am more than half convinced we are little more sentient than bacterium, or a virus. We eat, shit, fuck, and scheme. We see a green light and we go. Red and we stop. We do what our genes tell us to do, like the kinds of food our genes tell us to like, want to fuck the gene package that is most likely to successfully replicate our own set of instructions so we can make another one just like us to eat and shit and fuck.

The monkey on the back of the tiger holds an imaginary steering wheel, connected to nothing. He chatters to himself about why he wanted the tiger to turn left instead of right, but he's only fooling himself.

Anyone can see the tiger's the one in charge.

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I guess we need the fiction of control.

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If you think I'm off base on this, consider someone else, not you. I don't mean you. Or me, for that matter. But think about someone who really has lost it. A drug addict or alcoholic. A republican. A preacher or a cop.

They come up with all kinds of reasons for what they do, but anyone looking on from the outside can see what's really going on.

Right?

I mean, haven't you seen that yourself?

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Yeah, me too.

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So, if it's true for some of us, why isn't it true for all of us? Because if you are sensitive and loving and compassionate and spiritual then the lies you tell yourself are better than the lies an addict tells himself so he can keep getting high.

Right?

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I remain dubious.

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Whatever the reality is, I still am a big fat sucker for love. I don't even care if it's real, or what. I'm going to act like it matters, and that's all I need.

It doesn't have to really matter.

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I believe it does.

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I am a fool for love.

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Maybe my steering wheel isn't connected to anything at all.

But it is still fun to lean into the turns, and to feel the wind on my face.

6 Comments:

I've been flirting around this idea for awhile since I heard about genetic predispositions toward things, and you did it, you named my fears and went beyond them and then you nailed it. Because it is about leaning into the curve, never mind who's in control. It's the joy of that that counts.

I think you're onto something. I think you're a smart exciting sort of cookie.I don't know how much love you need in your life but you can reach me at 21k up the valley. You can bring your sweet wife.ha.(I think I'm only half joking)

We're on our way! Tell Mr. Trouthead he has to wear pants at least some of the time, though.

I have this idea of a few of us like-minded folks, scattered across the globe. We don't get to hang out with each other except in this ephemeral, disembodied way, but we are fulfilling some kind of planetary socio-ecological function, acting as dispersed supernovas, leaking love out in all directions to keep the whole mess from dying of ugliness. But if we were to all get together, it might throw some essential thing out of balance, crash the works.